


Sorry, Boss, It's a One-Off

by mobius_stripper



Series: Tales from the Tower [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-24
Updated: 2015-01-16
Packaged: 2018-02-22 11:48:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2506712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mobius_stripper/pseuds/mobius_stripper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>short silly scenes that got written but didn't work within the context of the 'serious story-telling' going on in the other thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. green can be cool and friendly-like (but not today)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The one where Bruce reconsiders his housing situation.  
> Title from Being Green as sung by Kermit the Frog

“I think you’ve been very patient, and I’m even willing to forgive you for falling asleep the first time and give you the Tony Stark lecture on everything Extremis.”  Tony shoves his chair closer, resting his feet precariously close to the microscope Bruce is using.  
“Don’t need it.”  
“Oh come on.  I swear, I will try to edit out the less relevant shit, but I have a _process_.”  
“Don’t need it.  I’ve already figured out Extremis can't help me.  A hole in the thoracic cavity is pretty simple compared to the Other Guy,” Bruce fiddles with the stack of coverslips.  “Extremis went to the repair center of your brain and pulled the blueprint of what your chest should look like and then built it.”  
“Didn’t feel simple at the time,” mutters Tony.  
“Every time _I_ come back, I come back unharmed, even if I was hurt before.  I wake up with no scars, no wounds, no real memories, just fewer clothes.  I already do what Extremis does, but the repair center of my brain has been rewritten to include... potentially turning into a giant green rage monster.”  
“Could be worse.  At least you don’t breathe fire and explode.”    
“That’s not really a comforting thought.”

-

JARVIS initiates a green alert at 2.13pm.  Tony cancels it at 2.14pm, and sends everyone a text saying that Bruce’s safety protocols are stupid and Pepper should be fired for letting him have them.  
This doesn’t discourage anyone within five floors from coming to the lab to find everything covered in powdery white.  
Bruce’s microscope and slide kits are on the ground; Dummy is sweeping them up sullenly, his fire extinguisher in Tony’s hands.    
“What happened?” Steve has use his Captain America voice to be heard over everyone else asking the same question with varying degrees of distraction.  
“Not much,” says Bruce, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

Tony maintains he gave Bruce a manly slap on the back.  For comfort.  Bruce says it felt like a starfish dry-humping his spine and so he pushed Tony off.  He did it with a grimace and sudden movement, which was apparently enough to exceed the safety parameters JARVIS had on file, hence lights flashing and Kermit the Frog serenading the Avengers with a solemn rendition of _Bein’ Green_.

“And as if it wasn’t enough JARVIS triggered some stupid protocol, Dummy hit us with the fire safety.”  Tony shakes the empty extinguisher.  
“It is not a stupid protocol,” Bruce says through his teeth.  
“It is if you’re more white than anything else right now.”  Tony runs a hand through his snowy goatee and leaves to properly dispose of the canister.

Bruce eyes the gun in Clint’s hand.  Hawkeye shrugs sheepishly and snaps it back into his holster.  Natasha gives him a friendly nod and oozes away like she wasn’t just debating whether to use the taser or the garrote on him.  Steve looks torn between wanting to help and letting Bruce be embarrassed where no one can see.  After a long ten seconds he offers to help clean up the lab, obviously hoping if Bruce wants to talk, he will.  

He doesn’t.


	2. sidekick adoption agency

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one where people bond over licensed merchandise.

Pepper has never wanted children. She understands why other people want them, but given how much work her boss-now-boyfriend is, children seems utterly impossible. Besides, Tony has offspring and they are, without exception, perfect.  Even Dummy.  And they never needed diapers.  
Still, when she walks into the common area to find Darcy and Jane giggling, surrounded by bags, she feels a little pang.  She blames it on the smell of acetone.

"Hi Miss Potts," chirps Darcy, who is probably a month away from being comfortable with using her new boss's first name.    
"We went for lunch but ended up in the Avengers store."  Jane doesn't look up from scrubbing her nails with a cotton ball.  
"The big one on five, or the kiosk outside the Burger King?"  
"Big one, of course."  Darcy shakes a gaudy red shade of nail polish enticingly.  "Do you want to get an Iron Man-icure with us?"  
"No, thank you."  Pepper surveys them.  "But the blue looks good."  
"Blue for Captain America.  Like his balls."  Darcy claps a hand over her mouth and turns as red as the bottle she's holding.  It subsides a little when she realizes Pepper is laughing.    
"Sold."  Pepper pushes a stuffed hammer off the couch to take a seat and toe off her Louboutins.

“Are we moving on to hair braiding next?”  Clint materializes in the doorway, Natasha right behind, eyeing the nail polish like a cat with a mouse.  
Darcy lobs something purple at him.  He catches it with ease before examining it.  "Purple?  Really?"  He turns a pout on Pepper.  
"We didn't make them and we had no say in the matter after we let them use the images."  She shrugs.  
"But why am I purple?  What about me says purple?  That’s not even a dignified, badass purple.  That’s full on ‘little girls love unicorns’ purple.”  
Natasha takes the bottle from him and sits down next to Pepper.

"I can’t decide between the green and the black.  Darcy, pick.”  Jane passes the Hulk and Black Widow bottles.  Darcy squints at the labels.    
“Hulk Smash-ing” she reads, “and Kiss of Death.  For Black Widow?  Oh, it’s got red glitter.  Wow, trying really hard; A plus for effort.  Go with the green.  The radioactive green.  It’ll make lab-time happy-fun-explaining-to-Bruce time."  
"I don't think Bruce will care."  Jane notes Darcy hoarding the red and gold bottles.  "Trying to suck up to Stark?"  
"Nope.  Red base with Thor thunderbolts.  Because the Flash is my fictional husband."  
"I thought Castiel was your fictional husband."  
“Jane, my fictional husbands are cool with my fictional polygamy.”

Clint pokes Natasha in the shoulder, jostling her hand.  "Were you ever that young?"   
Natasha frowns at the streak across her thumb.  While Clint is rummaging through the shopping bag closest to him, she paints a purple flower on his gun holster.  When he turns to show her the ' ~~keep calm and~~ hulk out and SMASH' mug, she's innocently blowing on her nails.

Pepper still doesn't want kids.  But she's becoming okay with having a family.


	3. please mr. postman (we need a bigger mailbox)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one where the U.S. Postal Service isn't actually the problem here.  
> Title from the Marvelettes (ha) song and the various, more famous covers of it.

Tony wakes up before noon and tries to make her French toast.  Jarvis requests she come to the kitchen because he is fanning the smoke alarm with a vacuum-sealed package of smoked salmon.

"So, living with a bunch of superheroes who can totally rescue you should we ever get trapped a hundred floors up in a burning building, best idea ever or what?"  Tony seems to have forgotten Pepper can actually survive gravity and fire, and it warms her heart, metaphorically, to think they might actually be getting back to normal.  
"I don't know if I would call any of you  _super_ ," she teases.  "Maybe Bruce, but only because he puts up with you every day."  
"It's not terrible, right?"  
"No.  It's not terrible.  How are you holding up?"  
"Well I haven't broken any crayons and I can actually sleep now, if that's what you're asking."

"Um... I can come back."  Darcy mentally curses her chronic bad timing.  Arguably, the only time it's worked for her was when her boss hit a god with a van.  "Actually, I kind of can't.  Someone from SHIELD just dropped off a metric shit-ton of mail for the Avengers.  And I need to know if we're sending it somewhere else or..."  
"What."  Pepper sounds absolutely lethal.  
"Apparently SHIELD steals it from the post office or something and they've delivered the less global-threat-level-one stuff.  It's mostly paternity requests and kiddie drawings, but there's a  _lot_ of it."  
"I'll call Derek and ask him to send some one to collect it.  In fact, Jarvis will give you his number, and you two can work it out.  This is part of your new position, after all."    
Darcy nods and leaves, looking less traumatized than the last assistant faced with a government agency.  Pepper wonders what it is about superheroes that naturally collects people who can stand with them, if not beside them.

"I give them 40% of my taxable income and they decide to spend it pawing through my mail?"  Tony pokes the soggy piece of charcoal in the frying pan.  
"Not all branches of the government hate you as much as you probably deserve."  Pepper takes it away from him and pushes it into the trashcan.  The bread-thing both scrapes and slurps on the way out.  "And they're not all incurably incompetent.  The DoD has Rhodey and his suit and the worst thing they've done is give it a paint job."  
Tony shudders.  "You say that like the paint job is trivial."

* * *

Derek is officially the Executive Vice President of Avenger Interests.  He's like three years older than Darcy and still calls himself Derek from the Department of Awesome.  It's the only name Tony Stark knows him by, so Darcy can understand why he's clinging to it.  

Apparently she had no idea how many psychos need validation, because even with spy-vetting, there's still a lot of freaky shit in those envelopes.  Derek doesn't seem fazed and tells her he has people who will handle that.  Then he asks, tentatively, which ones will want to write back personally.

Darcy almost says _all of them, asshole_ but when she thinks about it, Tony's really the only one who has the necessary narcissism and niceness to cater to his adoring fans.  And he's probably already doing that.  Bruce, or more specifically the Hulk, doesn’t read, and there probably won't be very many letters left by the time Derek's people get done with his pile anyway.    
Steve might do it for the kids, Darcy doesn't know how much mail actually made it to him when he was fighting the good fight. If she tried, she could probably find out if there was a Captain America mailing tradition like there is with Santa, but really it'd just be easier to ask the guy if he'd like to receive all his shit or just draft a few form responses and sign a bunch of pictures for distribution.  
There's a surprising amount of mail for Black Widow and Hawkeye considering they were not in-camera for most of the battle.  Then she remembers that what footage there is of them, they're in their SHIELD spanx, and she chooses not to touch any of those, with or without the vat of hand-sanitizer.    
Thor has a respectably-sized crate, which gives Darcy a sort of proxy-pride until she peeks at a few.  Then estrogen-solidarity demands she fake Thor's signature and mail all the poor, stupid, lonely people a note that says MY SOULMATE IS A SENTIENT HAMMER AND MY GIRLFRIEND IS BOTH SMART AND HOT.

None of this answers Derek's question.  Luckily, in the weeks that Darcy has been helper-gnoming for the most important people in a Fortune 5 company, she has picked up more than a few tricks.  
"I'll find out and get back to you as soon as I can."  If she could attach the little note that says 'from the desk of Pepper Potts, CEO' to a string of words, she would totally do it.  
Derek gives her a little salute as she struts out.


	4. where's the good in goodbye? (with the free food)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one where my years of experience partying with nerds counts as research.
> 
> There's no way I'd let Steve leave without traumatizing him with a Stark funded spectacle.

Tony's 'goodbye and good luck' gift is to throw a party in true Stark fashion.  Pepper vetoes burlesque dancers, the petting zoo and a panel of molecular gastronomists who wanted to use this as the pilot of their new TV series.  For that Steve and Clint insist she doesn't need to get them anything else.  Natasha simply pays a visit to the labs.

The final product, which Darcy insists on calling a shindig, is much less likely to cause an Incident than previously planned; on a completely unrelated note, Natasha has proven she can break in through Dummy's wireless and make him dance to Shakira's top ten.  Tony only acquiesced because the other bots are getting ideas and the labs have not been safety-rated for a ten tonne kickline.

Jane's interns are invited and they seem to have realized that arguing string theory vs loop quantum gravity will not cause a Hulk manifestation (that is seriously what they are calling it) because they all show up.  Darcy goads them into playing real-actual-wormhole-aka-Bifrost beer pong with her.  This involves a commandeered table and a designated wormhole cup, which when shot means everyone yells 'for Asgard!', downs a drink, any drink, and then switches sides.  Jane is menacingly good at this game.  Tony drags Steve in to help because little Rumi looks about two seconds away from liver failure.  

"Don't drink and derive," advises Darcy, offering her a glass of water.    
"D-dx e to the x is e to the x," Rumi shoots back as she lowers herself onto a sofa and carefully takes the glass.  

 -

Clint insists on modeling Jane-and-Darcy's present, a hideous purple snuggie with a bird puffy-painted on the left sleeve.  Natasha eyes the pink evening gown dyed into the fabric of hers before moving her stare to Darcy.  Darcy smiles brightly back and starts extolling the virtues of sleeved blankets.  Again.  Jane very seriously informs them that if SHIELD ever sends them to Tromso, snuggies are a must.  
 "Where's Tromso?" asks Clint.  
"Norway."  
"More like Snoreway," adds Darcy and joins two of the nerdherd in a short shimmy to a song about Kenya.

* * *

 Darcy knocks on the open door while Steve is considering the still folded-up moving boxes.  She seems a little less drunk now.

"I didn't want to do this to you in front of everyone.  Not after the Avenger-themed jello shots.  But I didn't want your only impression of me to be 'crazy and rude' either.  It’s just been really hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that you’re Captain America and you’re here and… well, not as hard as it was for you I’m sure- oh fuck it.”  She pulls a book and a pen out of her bag.

 _Captain America: How Good Becomes Great_ the cover says.  Steve feels a little sick but he takes both when she holds them out.

“I got it when I was twelve and read it again when- wait what are you doing?”  Darcy takes the pen from him halfway through the R in Rogers.  “I didn’t mean for you to autograph it.  I wanted you to correct it.”  She turns a few pages so he can see the watercolor illustration of the street he lived on.  “It’s basically a one-sided dialog with children of the baby boomer generation, telling us we’re lucky this guy from the greatest nation went to war when he did.”

“You said correct it?”

“Yeah.  The Steve in that book is nothing like you, not that I know you _that_ well, but _he_ sounds like a pompous dick.  Like, the one and only thing it says about Sarah Rogers is that she was a nurse.  It doesn’t say whether she was kind, what she made for breakfast when you were sick or what her favorite song was.  It’s a red, white and blue-washed version of your life written by a guy who thought the end of the Cold War meant Generation Y would grow up to be a bunch of unwitting communists.”  She manages to visibly rein herself in and return to her original intention.  “Red pen.  Means you’re the editor now.  You decide what should stay in that book and what’s utter crap.  You don’t have to,” she adds hurriedly.  “It was a stupid idea that came to me late at night and now I’m seriously regretting it.”

“Thank you.  I appreciate the thought.”  And he does.  "For the record I never thought you were rude.  Or crazy," he adds just a beat too late.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only in Kenya  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPtBnhehPOU


End file.
